The cost for windows isn't really a pressing concern for business--even startup business.
But the thing is if you go with windows, you're eventually going to have to support linux too just to get a the wealth of open-source codebases like say Redis. I mean its certainly possible to run Redis on windows via cygwin but you're 32-bit limited, and its a pain to actually install and get everything working.
On Fedora it's "yum install redis", and you're done.
That may be so, but how readily can you automate server setup? I am getting pretty handy with ubuntu VMs plus apt to get from a fresh install to "entire stack installed and configured" in an afternoon. The fact that nearly all of the software is available freely online speeds things up for me.
But the thing is if you go with windows, you're eventually going to have to support linux too just to get a the wealth of open-source codebases like say Redis. I mean its certainly possible to run Redis on windows via cygwin but you're 32-bit limited, and its a pain to actually install and get everything working.
On Fedora it's "yum install redis", and you're done.